Comment by giancarlostoro
2 days ago
I think this goes for Engineers as well. In fact, I say the biggest skill I want from a SENIOR developer regardless of years of experience is humility. Someone who "cannot do wrong" and is a toxic about it will poison the rest of the team with their toxicity. But the seniors who are more open to feedback even from Junior developers, those are the ones everyone else follows to hell and back because they're there with you through it all so you're there with them through it all too.
We are all humans, not robots. Heck, even the LLMs mess up.
One thing I watched closely for in interviews is the moment when an applicant said “I don’t know.” I have not had great experiences with tech co-workers who are incapable of saying that.
I willingly say it and tbh if you wont hire me for saying I dont remember or am drawing a blank I am glad, I dodged a bullet. Obviously I dont purposely say it but sometimes you get so nervous it escapes you.
Yea, this is a great one. I've had a lot of success in the past using the backpack problem / box packing as an interview question for problem solving / pair programming parts of the interview. It has "I don't know" built right in. It also has "I don't know, I'm going to make this decision for now but I expect it's wrong" built in.
Every time someone mentions a good idea for interviews, I imagine the interview prep people adding it to the standard performance ritual. Then the signal is lost for the needle in a haystack who actually embodies what you sought to find.
With how ridiculously performative and disingenuous the techbro interviews have become, if we don't want to play that game, we have to keep some signal unspoken.
Yeah being a good interviewer is an art. Some people give up and rely solely on whiteboard / algo questions because it typically guarantees technical skills but does not account for soft skills.
Well said - most people don’t realize there is a lot of overlap between good management skills and good senior engineering skills.
Specifically, getting people to follow your direction, giving and receiving difficult feedback, growing people, being able to engage thoughtfully in stressful conversations…
Engineers that don’t have these and believe their technical chops are the only thing that matters are extremely limited in their careers.
I have bounced a technically excellent staff level engineer off my team for this reason.
There are very few roles in tech for people to sit in a corner by themselves and write code, especially as you get to more senior roles.
So far, we have "it's also true for teachers!", "it's also true for parents!", and "it's also true for engineers!".
It's also true for all humans.
> Heck, even the LLMs mess up.
You can say that again. In another window, I am iterating with one for fixing my site CSS.
The best way for me to do CSS is always just live with the dev tools tbh I cant visualize it otherwise.
Same here. I was just scrubbing the CSS, It rearranged things, fixed a couple of typos, and removed a ton of redundancies.
Took a couple of tries, though. The first run broke everything.
LLMs mess a lot, they are very confident bullshitters.
But, humbleness is punished and confidence is generally rewarded. That is why so many people refuse to be humble - they know it will affect them negatively.